Thursday, December 01, 2016

Hexoshi (forum thread) is a libre game generally
inspired by the Metroid series, notably the older versions.

It is seeking funding using CrowdSupply for a budget of at least $1100 to achieve "Milestone 1" which involves fleshing out the first world of the game, including new enemies, player abilities, and 30-40 rooms, and the graphics for it all (which seems to be the bulk of the funding requirement).

It already looks quite well done, even though it is in the early stages of development. Smooth animations, accurate and responsive movement, and fun music all make it quite a compelling game and something the FOSS game scene doesn't really have.

Hexoshi is developed by Julie Merchant, aka onpon4 on the FreeGameDev forums. It is written in Python and SGE. Julie/onpon4 also developed ReTux (forum thread) - a project that received less credit than it deserved, likely because it looked so similar to SuperTux due to re-using graphics from the classic FOSS platformer. In my opinion, ReTux is a better and more original game than SuperTux and a remarkable achievement given it was a 1 man effort with a relatively short development time. However, when the developer tried to get ambitious funding for ReTux there seemed to be little response.

This time around, Hexoshi has no such problems with potential mistaken identity. The caveat is that the graphics do not exist for Julie to pick up and use. The crowd funding effort is already on track to succeed.